COMPATIBILITY TEST ON LOWER-EXTREMITY MOTION AND SENSORY SIMULATOR TO FMRI

摘要

This paper describes a novel motion simulator for the lower extremities of human in high magnetic field. This motion simulator provides a wearer with physical supports to walk or physical constrains as well as floor reactive force on bottoms of their feet during walking in a functional magnetic resonance imaging device (fMRI) room so that brain activities could be simultaneously measured. An fMRI is one of the most powerful tools to measure activities in any part of brain but a device attached on a subject is limited because a posture of an upper body is fixed and the material used for the device should be nonmagnetic. This paper shows the compatibility of the motion simulator that consists of Mckibben-type pneumatic artificial muscles and nonmagnetic materials.